The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1887-12-04
DECORATIVE NEEDLEWORK.
What Has Been Done by Women Towards Es-
tablishing Distinctive School of Art.

Special to the Indianapolis Journal.
NEW YORK, Dec. 3.-The famous drop cur
tain of the Madison-square Theater was the first
work executed by a group of women in New
York. whose subsequent efforts have placed on
a firm foundation what deserves to be called the
only distinctively American school of art in the
country.
Some day the great American novel may ma.
teralize; some day may have American
school of painting or of music Some day
may not look to Europe for art culture in any
line. Meantime the Associated Artists of New
York have established school of embroidery
whose work is as characteristic of its time and
founded on as enduring art principles as were
the old Gobelins tapestries. The exhibition of
American tapestries in progress for the past
fortnight at the rooms of the society has de-
monstrated again the fact that as beautiful
drapery, upholstery and wall-hanging fabrics
are being produced in this country as are made
in the world to-day.
Mrs Candace Wheeler is the head of the So
ciety of Associated Artists She is sister OF
Mrs. jeanette Thurber of American opera fame
and the mother of Dora Wheeler, an artist of
exceptional powers. Mrs. Wheeler is exqui-
sitely pretty woman. who looks quite much
like her daughters elder sister her mother,
and has thoroughly feminine charm. She is a
woman of business sense, also, and the affairs
discretion. She has pushed embroidery further
and in a more Independent direction than any
other art in the country, has been a very apostle
to teach self-help to young women and has made
considerable money withal, by her inventions of
new methods in tapestry and OF artistic fabrics
and dyes
needle-work the last thing to which one in
his senses would think of ascribing a money
value. Whatshe and her coadjutors have ac-
complished is translation OF the painters
methods into needle-work. Her first object was
the training of strong and original designers,
so that girls who had been fritterlng away their
days in fancy work'-with fancy in it
might treat textiles with feeling belonging to
pictures. All this called for new fabrics, new
materials. new color effects new methods OF
expressing drawing and perspective. All this
has resulted in a tapestry canvas woven of silk
and so treated that the design wrought by the
needle becomes part of the texture. and land
scape with color foreground middle distance
and perspective stands out upon It, reproducing
even the painters technique, whether it be the
brush work of an oil painting or the broad
washes of the water color. The bold creation OF
beautiful forms which this embroidery is
accomplishing is an important addition to the
serious art work of the country, and is showing
numbers of young women the road to honorable
self-support The tapestries are not play
things for day. Some of them are purely dec
orative fancies, true in spirit and in execution
but subject to the caprlceS of fashion, but others
are masterpieces for all time. Take an instance
from the tapestry studies from American fiction,
Hawthorne's Alice Pyncheon on her way to
Matthew Maules wedding. shown at the exhibit
ton. Alices thin white gown clings close about
her and a binding snow-storm fills the air.
The subject would not be easy one even for
painter to treat with its narrow range OF tints:
but in tapestry it is poetic. it suggests Haw-
thornes weird charm; it does for America and
American literature what the embroidery of
the middle ages did for the history, and the
nance and the art of that bygone time.
Dora Wheeler has, perhaps. the finest artistic
instinct of American tapestry designers, but
Mrs. Nj. A. Williamson, of indianapolis. is
bold and thoroughly original an American as
any.